System won't boot with hard drive attached.

gtghmgtghm New
edited February 2004 in Hardware
Hi all,
I'm working on trouble shooting a problem for a friend.
The system is a SOYO mini ATX with a Iomega Zip drive, Fujitsu 6gb HD, and a Maxtor 40gb HD.
The Fujitsu drive is the OS drive with XP home installed.

The problem is that when ever the Maxtor 40gb drive is connected the system hangs between the XP home screen and the weclome screen.
After the XP home screen loads the monitor goes black and then never goes to the welcome screen.
However if I remove the Maxtor Drive it boots fine into the OS.
I have checked the memory and its good.
In my testing it appears that the problem is something to do with the Maxtor drive and even when it is the only HD installed the system will not even boot to DOS using either a floppy or a bootable CDROM. But If I remove the Maxtor Drive then it will boot into DOS using either the floppy or the cdrom drives.

One other odd thing about this system is that with the Fujitsu drive (OS drive) installed it only boots into the os when it is on the first connector and jumpered to slave. I tried moving the jumper to both Master and Cable Select and putting it on the end of the cable but it wouldn't boot.
I removed the CMOS battery and shorted the CMOS jumper to reset the BIOS but that had no effect.

I know I could try new cables and I won't rule that out but what else could it be?

Thanks,
"g"

Comments

  • qparadoxqparadox Vancouver, BC
    edited February 2004
    Power supply perhaps? Did you run memtest ;) ... does the drive get detected correctly by the bios? How old is the m/b?
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited February 2004
    Did the HDD have XP Home on it before? Almost sounds like it is trying to boot off of that Maxtor hdd but gets pissed off because its on a different system that what it has installed drivers for.
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    If there is any old OS on the Maxtor it could cause it to hang.
    You need a new cable, the non-master of CS stuff is a problem.
    Look real hard at the jumpers on the Maxtor. Are there just four pins or is this one with a hundred combinations?
    Are you setting the boot seq in the BIOS?
  • gtghmgtghm New
    edited February 2004
    Ok just an update to this thread.

    The problem as it turns out it that the drive failed.

    I confirmed this with Maxtors testing program.

    It is still under warranty but that dosen't bode well if they had stuff on that drive that they wanted to keep...

    I wonder if there might be a way they can get the data off the drive for them?

    Also if they have sensitive information on the drive is there a way to destory it so that it can not be retrieved but at the same time not void the warranty?

    Thanks,
    "g"
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